


Over the Bridge

by EurydicaeQuercus



Series: Is this what a saviour looks like? [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Banter, Gen, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 22:52:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18860587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EurydicaeQuercus/pseuds/EurydicaeQuercus
Summary: During their explorations in the Emerald Graves, Zaren and Dorian come across an eerie bridge that seems to lead to nowhere. The situation quickly becomes supernatural.





	Over the Bridge

Zaren stood and looked out over the ancient, broken wooden bridge, trying not to shiver as the cold fog seemed to seep into her very bones. Her hands felt like they were cracking as she opened her palms to grab hold of the wet ropes either side. She could feel the slimy, uncertain texture of the bridge even through her boots as she took her first, hesitant step onto the rotten planks below. 

“You’re quite sure you want to do this?” asked Dorian from behind her. “I’m sure if we looked we could find other, less likely to collapse bridges nearby?”

“No, we can’t,” said Zaren, taking another step onto the bridge, and almost cringing at the terrible creaking sound it made as she shifted her weight onto it. 

“Why listen to what that old crone had to say about finding the ruins?” he asked, and even though she couldn’t see him, Zaren could tell he was flicking his staff back and forth with frustration. 

“She knows this place far better than we,” said Zaren with the patronising voice she would use for small children back in the Clan. “We would do well to listen to her.”

“Right, of course, of course,” said Dorian, and Zaren could feel him rolling her eyes at her back. 

She ignored this and continued to move across the bridge, each step producing yet another horrible creaking sound. The ropes slipped beneath her grip, no matter how tightly she tried to grasp them, slick with water. She tried to remember everything she’d been taught about how to keep her balance, both while fighting and climbing, and walked without swaying. Her heartbeat sped up a little as she began to hear the water rushing beneath her. It was a long way down. She couldn’t even see what lay below through the thick fog on all sides. 

Quite suddenly she heard a great cracking sound and one of the planks gave way just behind her. She did her best not to look back and sway the bridge. She took a deep breath. All she had to do was reach the other side. Or so the woman had said. 

“So, um, what am I supposed to do again?” asked Dorian, yelling across the bridge. “Just sit here and watch, or provide moral support and whatnot?”

“How about you just shut up!” yelled Zaren, letting her frustrations explode out for a moment. 

It had been a long day. First Varric had been brained by a rock one of the Freemen had lobbed at their heads, then Sera had demanded to stay behind to make sure he didn’t die (as though he would) and also so she didn’t have to deal with ‘all this witchy shite’. Then Zaren had found the old woman they’d been hearing about, who promptly directed them towards this old, run-down bridge in search of some ancient treasure or other. Frankly she didn’t really care about the treasure. Or any of this other bullshit. All she wanted to do was find Corypheus and stab him in the face so she could finally go home. But she couldn’t. So instead she was stuck on this bridge the Creators forgot trying her damnedest not to fall to her death. Part of her wanted to let go, just to see what would happen. But she didn’t.

“Noted,” yelled Dorian, who then became silent as a mouse. 

Zaren sighed deeply. She didn’t mean it. But she also didn’t have nearly enough humility to admit to it. She kept walking. 

Slowly, painfully slowly, the other side of the bridge came closer. The fog seemed to be getting thicker, Zaren could almost feel it as she kept walking forwards, her hair and her clothes and her face all getting wetter as the cold, light particles of water came from all around. Something in the air felt strange too; not just the thickening fog, something else, something more...transient. There was magic in the air. 

As she finally set foot on the bank on the other side of the bridge, she felt a great weight settle in her stomach. As though something was rooting her to the ground. Yes, there was something strange here. She looked all around, turning on the spot, trying to see what was wrong, then—

_ CRACK! _

She whirled around to see the bridge falling away behind her, the middle split completely in two. The ropes holding it in place sagged and fell away, the pegs that had been hammered into the ground flying out as the weight of the bridge pulled them down. Zaren quickly backed away from the edge as bits and pieces of the earth beneath the bridge began to fall down into the river below. Her heart hammering in her chest, she tried to see across the other side.

“Dorian!” she yelled, her voice carrying loud and clear. “Are you still there?”

“Regrettably yes!” he yelled back, and Zaren felt her heart slow down a little. 

“Stay where you are!” she said, looking back at where she had been stranded. 

“Trust me, I’m not going anywhere!” he said, and Zaren walked up to two large pillars she could see emerging from the fog. 

As she got closer, she could see they were made of old, cracked white stone. She also noticed that they were much higher than she’d initially assumed, spiralling high into the air, beyond her view in the fog that still obscured everything around. She tentatively reached out a hand. 

It was cold, freezing to the touch, but there was a spark as her hand connected, something pulsing within the stone. Magic. Everywhere there seemed to be magic. Something felt incredibly wrong. There shouldn’t be so much energy here. Even in the depths of the Exalted Plains, where she could almost feel her ancestors pushing at the edges of the Veil in their desperate battles for freedom, she had never felt so much energy. Here, in the Emerald Graves, where so many laid buried and lost, the balance between the Veil and the physical world could be so easily upset. And there was so much magic. This...would be bad. 


End file.
